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A new campaign was launched last week in Ireland to provide a ‘strong visual reminder’ to drivers that children could step onto the street at any time.
The initiative, which encourages residents to put a life size image of a child on their wheelie bins, was launched in Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo on 13 May.
It is hoped the ‘innovative’ idea, which originally came from Australia, will lead to a reduction in speed and in turn improve child pedestrian road safety.
Noel Gibbons, Mayo Council’s road safety officer, says road traffic collisions account for 36.7% of all child deaths and are the leading cause of child mortality in Ireland.
While child road fatalities in Ireland decreased by 89% and serious injuries by 75% between 1997 and 2012, a total of 262 children were killed and 1,115 seriously injured in that period.
Noel Gibbons said: “We believe these stickers have the potential to have a real impact.
“When we look at road safety generally, we look at figures and numbers, but what we often overlook is the human face behind that.
“The stickers put the human element to the potential situations we can find on the roads we travel each day.
“It is the streets around our estates which we are the most familiar with and often the most complacent with.”
There is always a dilemma here between alerting motorists and worrying parents who will increasingly decide to keep their children indoors rather than let them play out. Increasingly children’s independent travel is restricted and the message of this campaign will be seen by parents as especially worrying.
Kris Beuret
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Stickers on Wheelie Bins. What a great idea. Perhaps those concerned about the placing of wheelie bins in the road could consider the abandonment of motor vehicles in streets which seem to be far larger, far more immovable and more difficult to see around than a mere wheelie bin!
Rod King, 20’s Plenty for Us, Cheshire
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A good idea in principle but sadly completely wiped out by an ill-thought through promotional photo. Noel, if you let me have a sticker I will happily put it on my bin positioned on collections days at the edge of the garden to be seen by all passers-by. Keep on coming up with the innovative ideas.
Pat, Wales
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Let’s hope nobody recycles any children in the bins! But on the other hand……….
Well done to Noel, hopefully with a campaign making the right type of impact.
Gareth RSGB
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Some good road safety initiatives have come out of Ireland in recent years, but deliberately obstructing the highway with large objects, big enough to obstruct a driver’s view of a child?
Hugh Jones, Cheshire
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I hope they don’t turn out to be the bins who cried wolf.
Iain (Scotland)
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In the areas that I know in England that have wheelie bins, the bins must be placed on the boundary of your own property on collection day. They must not be placed on the pavement and certainly not in the road. Many areas have multiple wheelie bins in all colours of the rainbow for different things i.e. recycling, general household rubbish, food waste, garden waste, paper & card etc etc. Imagine them all over the pavement or road, with or without pictures of children on them!
VB
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Good for them! Cheap effective home-made measures are frowned upon in GB though, and would likely lead to prosecutions.
Charles, England
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